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Tuesday, July 31, 2012

If Romney accomplished nothing else during his Israeli visit, he did manage to offend every single Palestinian Arab terrorist group, all of whom, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP and the DFLP, issued press releases denouncing him. Their American media outlets, on a desperate gaffe hunt, seized on his statement that the GDP Per Capita differences between Israel and the territory under the control of the Palestinian Authority are the result of different values.

The official media narrative is that these differences are the results of eons of oppression, checkpoints and blockades. Fair enough. But then why does the IMF put Israel's GDP Per Capita well ahead of the oil rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia has no Israeli checkpoints, no Israeli soldiers or planes flying overhead. It has wealth literally pouring out of the ground with a fifth of the world's petroleum reserves. And yet the IMF puts it 13 places behind Israel and the World Bank puts it 8 places behind Israel. The only Muslim countries with a better GDP Per Capita rating than Israel are small monarchies drowning in oil.

The non-oil Muslim countries who are closest to Israel are Malaysia and Lebanon, 32 and 33 places behind Israel. Both countries also have sizable non-Muslim populations. Muslims make up only 50 percent of Lebanon and only 60 percent of Malaysia.

38 places below Israel is Turkey, which until recently was a secular country and actually has a statistically significant atheist population. And that's it. Below that we fall off a cliff into places like Belarus, South Africa and Grenada; all of whom still have better GDP Per Capita rates. No Muslim country without oil has a better GDP Per Capita than a Muslim country that has sizable Christian or Buddhist minorities.

What Romney didn't mention, but should have, is that the Palestinian Authority dealt yet another blow to its economy when it drove out the Christian population. Christians in the territories have traditionally made the best businessmen and the capital of the Palestinian Authority was actually started by Jordanian Christian refugees escaping Muslim persecution. And their decline follows a pattern of Christian communities across the Middle East declining and disappearing under Muslim rule.

Meanwhile Israel is burdened with 1.2 million Muslims inside the Green Line, many of whom work in an unreported black economy, and account for 52 percent of national social benefits. Israel's national unemployment rate is 5.6 percent. The Arab unemployment rate is 27 percent. Only 59 percent of Muslim men and only 19 percent of Muslim women are officially part of the workforce. That's compared to 56 percent of Jewish women and 52 percent of Christian women.

The average Israeli family has double the monthly income of the average Arab family. Half the Arab sector officially lives in poverty. According to many NGO's this is due to racism. According to many economic statistics this is due to working for a living and then reporting your income.

The Israeli Jewish GDP is nearly three times higher than the Arab-Israeli GDP. This could be blamed on the usual scapegoat of racism, but the Israeli Arab GDP of $6,750 is actually better than the $5,900 GDP in neighboring Jordan, the $6,540 GDP in Egypt and the $5,041 GDP in Syria. This is the same range in which most non-oil Arab Muslim states are grouped and it is clear that there is no escaping it without a big petroleum reserve. Or like Lebanon with its $15,523 GDP, a whole lot of Christians to actually work for a living.

Again culture is still the determinant. Israel within the Green Line only has about 150,000 Christians and about as many Druze, and both groups perform better economically. Christian Arabs have a higher employment rate and a better rate of higher education than Muslims.

Apart from that official 1.2 million, Israel is also responsible for the 4 million in the Palestinian Authority (some of whom overlap with that 1.2 million and some of whom are imaginary and exist only to collect benefits from international agencies) who are still Israel's responsibility, according to them and to the world, even though they also continue insisting that they want their own state.

The reason why the GDP in Palestinian areas is so terrible is because its inhabitants live in a giant welfare state. Their income comes entirely from foreign aid. They don't need an economy because the United States and the European Union are their economy. They don't need a state because the UNRWA is their state. Palestinian Arabs were already receiving 725 dollars in per capita assistance. Despite their absolutely terrible GDP, only 16 percent of their population in the West Bank lives below the poverty line. That's a better rate than that of Israeli Arabs, who don't have an entire UN agency dedicated to taking care of them, and do actually have to work for a living.

It's easy to admire Israel for what it has accomplished, but it stands out so much because of the region it's in. Singapore and Hong Kong are less remarkable because they are in a region where countries don't just give up and wait around for foreigners to come and find oil on their land or for the Mahdi to arrive. In Asia, countries make things happen for themselves. In the Middle East, if you're not Jewish or Christian, and you don't have oil, then you have economic problems.

But let's leave the Middle East and head over to Asia. India and Pakistan are divided by a GDP Per Capita difference of almost a thousand dollars. India is naturally in the lead. Within India, Muslims are at the bottom of the economic ladder. Their per capita GDP is lower, their literacy rate is lower and they perform worse than Hindus. And yet the average Indian Muslim annual income at 513 dollars is still higher than the average annual income in Pakistan at 420 dollars. This remains consistent with the higher Arab-Israeli income and lower Jordanian Arab income model meaning that Muslims in non-Muslim countries will earn less than the majority, but more than they would in a majority Muslim country.

In Africa, Muslim Somalia sits next door to Ethiopia and Kenya and its GDP is so small it can't even be registered compared to $1,093 and $1,746 for them. You might try to blame Somalia's civil war, but Rwanda, which experienced a genocide, has a $1,341 GDP. Niger with an 80 percent Muslim population and a $771 GDP sits next door to Chad with only a 53 percent Muslim population and a $1,865 GDP. Next door Cameroon has a 70 percent Christian majority and a $2,257 GDP.

Now let's head over to Europe. In Britain the myth of the hardworking Bangladeshi or Pakistani storekeeper is practically sacred. In reality 70 percent of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis live in low income households, compared to 50 percent of Africans, 30 percent of Indians and 20 percent of the natives. Bangladeshis and Pakistanis not only have dramatically higher unemployment rates than natives, but they have higher unemployment rates than Africans.

If the issue were racism, then their unemployment rates would be in line with far lower Indian unemployment rates. Instead Muslims have the worst economic record in the UK. Pakistani Muslims in the UK are three times more likely to be unemployed than Hindus. Indian Muslims are twice as likely to be unemployed as Indian Hindus.

Again this fits the same model of Muslims from non-Muslim countries being less economically inept than Muslims from majority Muslim countries. The crucial difference between minority Muslims and majority Muslims is culture. Minority Muslims do have their own culture, but no minority group can entirely escape the values of the majority culture. Arab Israelis and Indian Muslims absorb enough of the values of the majority culture to perform better than their neighbors in Jordan or Pakistan. And they even carry on these absorbed values when they move to another country.

We can see the direct consequences of those values in action. In the UK, Muslims have the highest dropout rate and lack of qualifications of any religion. They have the highest male and female unemployment rates. This isn't racism, this is Islamism.

Muslims have the highest unemployment rate in Ireland. In Belgium, Moroccans and Turks have a five times higher unemployment rate of the native population. In Australia, Muslims have twice the unemployment rate of non-Muslims and forty percent of their children live below the poverty line. Muslims also have the highest unemployment rate in Canada, 14.4 percent to a national rate of 7.2 percent.

The response to all these numbers is the usual cry of racism, but racism fails to explain why Muslims fail more comprehensively at home than they do abroad. If Muslims fail in the West Bank, then Israeli checkpoints are to blame. If they fail in Canada, Australia and Europe, then racism is to blame. But if they fail in Pakistan, Somalia and Saudi Arabia-- who is to blame?

It can't be Mitt Romney or Benjamin Netanyahu, because neither of those men run Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. The answer can't be racism, because Saudi Arabia gets everything it wants and it still fails. It can't be colonialism, because these days the Muslim world is doing the colonizing. So what's left?

Responsibility is the missing element. It's the character value without which there can be no economic success. The temptation by leftists and Muslims to respond to Romney's comments and these statistics by finding someone else to blame is revealing and damning. These statistics are only the tip of the iceberg of larger statistics about illiteracy, violence and corruption that account for Muslim economic malaise.

The same lack of responsibility that manifests itself after a Muslim terrorist attack, when Muslims rush to position themselves as the victims, rather than dealing with the violence in their midst, also manifests itself in the economic arena and in every aspect of life. This lack of responsibility is a failure of values that cannot be escaped or ascribed to racism, checkpoints or the boogeyman.

Muslims have failed to deal with their problems and so we are left dealing with them instead. But just because the Muslim world insists on pretending that the problems aren't there or blames them on third parties does not make the problems go away.

Ignorance and stupidity is its own punishment, whether it be Muslim or western liberal.

Romney pointing out the effect of culture is the most salient observation by a politician in recent memory.

Until recognition and adoption of proven ‘beneficial’ societal values is accepted as evolutionary adaptation… rather than as abandonment of societal identity, societal inequality both materially and as a measure of ‘quality of life’ will not only continue but widen and deepen.

The upshot being that the Arab world will use their own failure and squalor as a weapon against the west. In the next generation as the population explodes and the oil runs out, the Arab states will have to create a hundred million jobs just to keep pace with today's level of failure and squalor. Arab states will threaten global explosions, mass destruction, region wide chaos and famine unless the west dumps hundreds of billions of dollars and euros on them, for free. The Arabs will further threaten the west that unless they tear the doors off the borders and let unlimited numbers of poor squalorous Arabs in immediately to partake of the social welfare of the west that things could get very very unpleasant for the west from within and without. One by one the western nations will fall and become a new Pakistan a new Bangladesh a new Yemen.

All too true of course and for that reason too dificult for a liberal to digest.Twenty years ago I met a Russian who told me that within a generation the West and Russia would have to raise legions to stand on it's frontiers which would have to be fortified and closed. If it did not do so it would eventually be overwhelmed. I see no reason to think he was wrong. But we have no legions and our frontiers are wide open. We cannot survive.

My favorite is Malaysia/Singapore. They were once the same country, have identical climate/resources (if we restrict Malaysia to its part near Singapore). Now you can eat off of the streets in Singapore, but in Malaysia there are open ditches for sewers. 1st world vs 3rd world medicine, infrastructure, water supply etc. If anything Malaysia should be ahead due to it's increased size/ resources.

i worked in the KSA for a while years ago. We think of the KSA as Riyadh, Al Khobar, and Jeddah in the west. Outside of these cities there are vast areas that are productive only around an oasis or still follow a very traditional life of herding and subsistence farming, small family run souk stalls, etc. In order to have a big money business, you must be in some way related to the ruling clans to succeed. These ruling elites hire foreigners to work for them, as few locals will. When I came back I read an interesting article about the Palestinians in the camps. The info was based on UN statistics. In the late 70-early 80's, Palestinians had more college degrees, engineers, and physicians and had the largest group of arab/muslim expats working in places like KSA sending home money. I suspect that since the PLO and PA took over, followed by Hamas and Hizbullies, this is no longer the case, as the UN reflief funds are now routed through these dens of thieves. I also suspect, based on my experience, secular muslims that wish to get ahead, wish to live more western, but still retain a muslim identity of some kind, leave for the west.

Great post grounded in hard facts. In Malaysia, the 40% of the population who are non-Muslims are responsible for 80% of GDP. And every company has to have a muslim on its board, who gets a share of the profits, even though they do nothing for it.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission in the UK published a report that said 51% of Muslim males and 76% of Muslim females are unemployed - the highest rate among any sector of British society no matter how you slice it.

Damn these facts; why do you always have to present facts and use them to build a case? Where is the room for argument proving how all the world is biased against the muzzies?

Just to further prove your point about cultural and religious ethos and how they affect the particular groups, there is always the examples of Sikhs. They are a minuscule minority of about 2% in India and yet are one of the most successful communities in India irrespective of where ever they may be living. They are doing well even in west as compared to most other migrant communities and yet the "Liberal dummies" never seem to see such examples and can only cry racism at the drop of every hat, real or imaginary.

Why did you attack on Arabic peoples? I find it upsetting to see this always attacking left and right from people.If some have no responsibile activity to repair for what they have done judge them but do you judge all Arabic peoples for this?No, it should not be so to judge every one of the people for what some will do.

Daniel,There is another side to these numbers. Muslims game the system of welfare. They don't place their money into banks and they often work off the books. If they run a store, they only record a tiny amount of their profit. If they drive a limo, they do the same. In the end they look like they are poor and receive medicaid, food stamps, and every other form of government subsidy. At the same time, they buy houses and other items of high value. If a Muslim man has multiple wives, every one of them is listed as a single mother and receives every government subsidy available. Whatever he makes, and these men work, does not need to be spent on common household expenses. They drive expensive cars and wear expensive jewelry.

BeenThere: Good counter-post.Regarding the Palestinians in KSA - agreed they did all that & remitted good money back to their folks in the refugee/concentration camps around the M.E.But then, when Saddam invaded Kuwait they jumped in to support their hero.When their hero got kicked back to BaggersDad, they got booted out of Kuwait & KSA.Some of them were "snapped up" in the UK, eager fpr some cheap votes (Daniel) but mostly their supply of loot dried up, shafting their folks back in the camps - who they joined ....

David Lloyd-George who was prime minister of England in 1917 at the time that the Balfour Declaration was published, wrote an article in 1923 entitled "The Jews and Palestine". Thanks to a group in New Mexico called Ein Shalom, you can find it on the internet at: http://einshalom.com/archives/210 He said that 400 years of occupation of Palestine by colonial Turkey had transformed the biblical land of milk and honey to a wasteland. He said it would take Jewish rule to reconstitute it as a productive land. The Jews, according to an American Soil Conservationist had created a miracle in Palestine in draining the swamps and ridding it of malaria. See: George Gilder, "The Economics of Settlement" http://spectator.org/archives/2011/06/08/the-economics-of-settlement